Introduction

I am Pekka Kämäräinen from Finland. From 2005 on I work as a senior researcher at Institut Technik & Bildung (ITB), University of Bremen. With my blog I want discuss European innovations in vocational education and training (VET) and in workplace learning.

Working & Learning

Then, I have to apologise for the quiet period. I really didn’t mean to have such a long winter break after the holiday period. It just happened that after some urgent reporting at the end of January I experienced a complete computer crash.

And it was really scary. The first sign of relief was that all data was stored on an external hard disk. And I got a replacement computer for the time that mine was being repaired. But it took some time to find out what all needs to be repaired and to get the spare parts. Now, as of today afternoon, I am checking if everything works as usual. And as I see it, some things need to be reloaded. But this is a step-by-step process (and a story of its own).

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Some time ago we were pleased to announce the our EU-funded Learning Layers (LL) project had received the European VET Research Excellence 2018 Award in the context of the European Vocational Skills Week 2018 in Vienna. Now we have another reason to celebrate. Our former partners from the LL project who have continued the development of the Learning Toolbox (LTB) with their start-up companies have been successful. The start-up company Kubify that develops LTB for ePosters has won the #IBTMWorld Tech Watch Award 2018 at the international event of conference organisers.

For us, the LL partners, who have been intensively involved in the co-design, co-development and introduction of LTB in the North-German construction sector, this is great news. Also, we are happy that we have piloted successfully with the ePosters at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) and in its VETNET section in Bolzano last September. However. looking at the photos from the #IBTMWorld event organisers’ event – see below – we can observe that our LTB-developers have taken many steps forward. This award is richly deserved!

From the introduction for new users to the creation of users’ own ePosters

Working with ePosters: From the Mini-Poster Wall to user engagement at the ePoster Arena

The Award Winners and The Award

Congratulations to the award winners and keep on doing the good work! We are very interested in continuing the good cooperation with you – with the LTB and with the ePosters.

With my previous post I started to blog on the third transnational project meeting of our EU-funded project TACCLE4-CPD that took place in Pontypridd, Wales. This project is working with frameworks, pedagogic concepts and arrangements for continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers and trainers in promoting their digital competences. It builds upon the achievements of three previous TACCLE projects that worked directly with teachers and provided support for promoting their digital competences. The fourth project has the task to support training providers and managers in shaping adequate arrangements for CPD in different educational sectors and enhancing appropriate digital competences.

In my previous post I gave a picture, how we revisited the key idea of this project and in what respect we have to face different challenges than the earlier TACCLE projects. The main difference is that we have to support policy-developers, educational managers and training providers – not immediately acting teachers and trainers. This has consequences for the policy analyses and frameworks to be developed in the project – as well as for our approach to collecting Open Educational Resources (OER). In general, we reached a common conclusion on giving a central role for our work with a Mindmap as an integrative tool. However, as I see it, this provided further challenges, how to link my contributions to this approach.

Linking the sector of vocational education and training (VET) to the work of TACCLE projects

In this context it is worthwhile to remind that the TACCLE projects have so far focused on general education (and general adult education). Thus, the emphasis has been on school-based education and classroom teaching. In this respect the field of vocational education and training (VET) with different institutional settings and with different interfaces between education and working life has not been present. As a contrast, our institute (ITB) had recently worked in a major EU-funded project Learning Layers in which we worked together with construction sector and with a training provider for work process -oriented learning. As a contribution to this project we had organised two campaigns for training of trainers to enhance their digital competences. In the proposal for the TACCLE4-CPD project this background had been highlighted as a major asset of our institute ITB in the current project.

However, when the TACCLE4-CPD project started working, it became clear to me that I have to provide insights into the legacy of the Learning Layers project and what needs to be considered when discussing CPD policies and measures in the field of VET. Also, I noticed that there is a need to provide insights into the institutional complexity of the German VET system – in order to grasp the role of different policy levels and R&D programmes. In this respect I felt that we from ITB had to work ourselves in into the TACCLE4-CPD projects and that we had to open new perspectives for the project work. Below I illustrate this process with three key themes.

Critical analyses of policies for promoting digital competences in the field of VET

Already in an earlier blog I had addressed the institutional complexity of the German VET system – with reference to the federal governance model and the dual system of VET (based on workplace-based training supported by school-based education). Taking into account the diversified power structures on education and training it is possible to understand the relevance of R&D projects and of specific sectoral partnerships. Therefore, I had produced for our November meeting a report that firstly gave a brief overview on the governance structures in education and training in Germany. Then I presented an overview of selected R&D projects that have a relevance for promoting digital competences and in shaping patterns of CPD. Thirdly, I included some interviews from actors in the field to highlight, what kind of impact different policies and initiatives have at the local level.

When I presented this contribution, I realised that it was written in the old way as a national report. In the light of our discussion on the critical analysis of policies I needed to transform the perspective to a general approach to the field of VET. Then I needed to outline different systemic models and levels of policies – after which the German governance structures could be given as examples. In a similar way the level of R&D programmes should be outlined with some main themes – under which the selected cases should be given as illustrative examples. Finally, the engagement of actors in the field should be discussed in the light of lead initiatives and by presenting modes of participation. In this way the report would provide (to some extent) an introduction to the VET section in the MindMap and should also address, how the MindMap can be used.

Exploring the project histories of TACCLE projects and of Learning Layers

As a second contribution I had prepared a discussion paper that compared the project histories of the three earlier TACCLE projects and that of the Learning Layers (LL) project (with focus on the Construction pilot). In both project histories I noticed similar phases of search, reorientation and enrichment and encountering new challenges. From the perspective of LL project experience I emphasised the central role of Learning Toolbox (LTB) as an integrative toolset for supporting vocational and workplace-based learning. From this perspective there is a slight tension vis-à-vis the former TACCLE projects that focused on general school education and emphasised the role of teachers’ handbooks.

When discussing this contribution I realised that I had not been able to reach the perspective of TACCLE4-CPD. Here, in addition to the work with the MindMap, it is worthwhile to take a look at the DigCompEdu framework as a bridging approach. Based on this framework it is possible to see the legacy of the LL project (including the co-design process, the training campaigns and the introduction of the LTB) as a systematic effort to link occupational competences, pedagogic competences and learners’ competences to each other. Here, the LTB served as a toolset that was shaped to support such integrative processes. From this perspective I needed to rework the paper to emphasise this approach and to avoid an impression that I would only be pushing the tool as such.

Reflections on different training models for promoting digital competences

A further important theme that we discussed was comparison of different training models. We noticed a general trend towards divisive grouping of training models as abstract lists. In our discussion we found it more appropriate to reinterpret such ‘models’ as ‘characteristics’ and to look, how different characteristics can be combined in holistic training concepts. From this perspective the “Theme Room” training that was used in the LL project would serve as an interesting case. In particular the prospect of further development of this concept – including the use of LTB during the training and after it – is an interesting challenge.

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I guess this is enough of these points. To some extent this brief report may appear as insider-discussion – given that the MindMap is not yet there as an illustration. However, to me it was important to write down my interim conclusions for further work in the project.

Last week our EU-funded project TACCLE4-CPD had its third transnational project meeting in Pontypridd, Wales. I have reported on this project in my earlier blogs (December 2017 and June 2018). We are developing frameworks and support for continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers and trainers in promoting their digital competences. As I have told earlier, this project is based on the work of three earlier TACCLE projects that provided direct support for teachers in integrating digital competences to their teaching. This project has the task to develop frameworks, concepts and support resources for CPD measures in different educational sectors (general education, adult education and vocational education and training (VET)). And as I have mentioned elsewhere, the success of all TACCLE projects has been based on the founding work and intellectual leadership of Jenny Hughes. In this respect our meeting was located to Pontypridd to meet Jenny at her home grounds and to make contacts with her local counterparts. Sadly, we lost Jenny shortly before the meeting. In the new situation we had to make a new situation assessment plan our work without counting on Jenny’s active support. Below I try to summarise some key points in our general discussion on the main Intellectual Outputs of the project. In my next blog I will discuss my contributions to the project and how they are related to this discussion.

What does ‘developing CPD’ mean for the project?

To be sure, we had discussed already in the first meetings the aims of our project and the background from where the project idea arises. Yet, at this meeting we had a special need to revisit these discussions. And here we were partly guided by Jenny’s legacy. In an earlier video interview she had told of the time lag between the proposal for the TACCLE1 project (for supporting the development of e-learning content for classroom teaching) and the actual start of the project. During that period the introduction of Web 2.o tools had taken off massively and the project had to catch up with this development. According to jenny, this was managed and the project integrated introduction to Web 2.0 tools into its original idea.

In our project meeting we found ourselves facing a similar challenge. Initially the TACCLE4-CPD project had been planned to scale up the work of the TACCLE courses and related local and regional teacher training activities. Whilst some sections of the proposal were referring to policies, strategies and management choices, other parts were very close to planning specific training activities and support materials for classroom teachers. However, the key idea was to proceed one level up in making transparent the policy choices for shaping training programmes, providing organisational learning opportunities and for linking them to progression models. And as we now saw, it several international organisations were active in mapping this landscape, developing new frameworks and in promoting pilot activities. These newer developments provided us a challenge in keeping up with the discussion and linking our work to it. Below, the implications for two Intellectual Outputs are discussed in this respect.

Concerning policy analyses we were aware of the problem faced by many European projects when they had provided national reports presenting the education and training policies of their countries. Although the aim of these reports had been to inform each other and to faclitate mutual learning, they often highlighted systemic differences and strengthened cultural barriers. From this point of view it was important to get insights into new patterns of sharing policy concepts and adapting policies that had been trialled in other countries (as Graham Attwell reported on the work of Unesco with a group of East-African countries. Also, for our common understanding of ‘policy learning’ it was important to share information on the European DigCompEdu framework that promotes new kinds of developments across different systemic frameworks.

In the light of the above we could give a new emphasis on the work with an integratibe mindmap that Koen de Pryck had started. Instead of separating different countries, we were able to create an overview on policies for promoting digital competences at different levels:

In this context the specific ‘Routemap’ and ‘EMM-framework’ concepts that we had discussed earlier, could be seen as part of a wider group picture and could be linked to other elements. Thus, we could see the seemingly separate tasks as mutually complementing elements within an integrative framework. Also, we could see that the Mindmap could guide different users to find their levels of activity, perceive the dependencies and chances as well as address questions and outline options.

Implications for our work with Open Educational Resources

In a similar way we revisited the question, how to create collections of Open Educational Resources for TACCLE4-CPD. In the earlier TACCLE projects it was clear that the OER collections should equip teachers with teaching materials and pedagogic advice for their work. To some extent this emphasis was present in the proposal. However, as a consequence of the newer developments at different policy levels – and due to newer approaches to ‘policy learning’ – there is a demand for OER collections that cover different levels and address strategic dependencies and/or opportunities for pioneering. From this perspective we concluded that the work with the Mindmap is also the core structure for shaping a collection of OER (with sufficient amount of commentary).

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I think I have grasped above the crucial steps in revisiting the proposal and reworking our way further. Based on these new perspectives we could see, how many elements of our work were growing together. Also, this discussion helped us to see, how to link input and influences from earlier or parallel projects to our work. In that sense I could see more clearly the importance of the work with the Learning Layers project and its follow-up measures. I will discuss this in my next post.